


Confrontation

by tiger_moran



Category: Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms, Sherlock Holmes (Downey films), Sherlock Holmes - Arthur Conan Doyle
Genre: Angst, Asexual Character, Biphobia, Bisexual Character, Caring, Confrontations, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Homophobia, Love, M/M, Misogyny, Past Abuse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-05
Updated: 2016-08-05
Packaged: 2018-07-29 12:12:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,642
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7684102
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tiger_moran/pseuds/tiger_moran
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>During what should have been a pleasant evening out together, Moriarty and Moran encounter Moran's father, Sir Augustus Moran</p>
            </blockquote>





	Confrontation

It should have been a pleasant evening, indeed it _was_ a pleasant evening up until Moran glanced across from their own box and saw the slightly stooped figure in a box to one side.

He swallows thickly and drops his head, his shoulders slumping as he seems to shrink into himself. Noticing this, Moriarty follows the direction of his gaze, observing the source of his companion's vexation - a man who is almost a stranger to the professor, yet in some ways almost as familiar to him as the colonel himself.

“Sebastian.” He slips his hand across, taking Moran's hand in his, squeezing it.

“I'm all right.” Moran jerks his hand away as if ashamed of wanting – _needing_ – the contact.

Moriarty accepts this rejection with his lips pressed tightly together and a narrowing of his eyes, understanding that this is not really about him at all; that it is everything to do with that grey-haired old man with the cold blue eyes who is now staring in their direction.

“Sir, I... I need to go.” Moran stands up, not looking at Moriarty.

Moriarty stands up at once. “I'm coming with you.”

“No!” Now Moran glances at him. “No, you stay. I know you were enjoying the performance.”

“So were you.”

Moran looks down at the carpet. “Stay, sir. I don't want him to spoil things for both of us.”

“I can hardly enjoy myself if I am concerned about you.” Moriarty slips his arm through Moran's. “Come along. We'll go somewhere more private.”

Moran parts his lips as if to protest further but closes his mouth without saying anything more. It is pointless to argue with the professor when his mind is made up.

How different their retreat from the opera house is to their arrival. Then they arrived in the opulent surroundings amidst a crowd of men smartly attired in their largely monochromatic evening wear and women in their fine dresses and laden with glittering jewels, walking up the plush carpeted stairways beneath the beautiful chandeliers in happy anticipation. Now the building appears almost empty save for a member of staff here and there as they descend the stairs and head outside and the warmth and brightness inside that had seemed welcoming before now seems overbearing and oppressive.

“What's he even doing here?” Moran grumbles as they walk.

“There is no law against him attending the opera,” Moriarty points out.

“But since when did he give a damn about opera?”

Moriarty has no answer for this, being far less familiar with Augustus Moran's character than his companion is and sensing that Moran was not really addressing him anyway. Moran seems engrossed in his own thoughts, which is probably not a good sign. Moriarty pulls Moran a little closer to him, wondering if perhaps his physical proximity will provide some comfort to the colonel.

Outside in the cooler air Moran is silent, looking down at the ground as he walks. Things might have been all right, Moriarty will think shortly, had they not been obliged to wait a few minutes for their carriage to collect them. It is time enough for Augustus Moran to trail them, seemingly having temporarily abandoned his own companions for the evening to pursue his disreputable son.

“Look at you, flaunting your depravity in public,” the old man spits, leaning heavily upon a silver-topped cane as he approaches the pair. He glares at them from beneath bushy grey brows, his gaze falling most intently upon his son.

Moriarty arches an eyebrow at this remark, demonstrating with one supercilious little gesture his disdain for such words. “Two friends attending the opera together, merely linking arms as male friends are wont to do, my my, shocking behaviour indeed,” he sneers.

Augustus Moran's gaze shifts back towards him, though seeing the coldness within the professor's eyes even he seems to step back a pace. “I know about you,” he says. “A disgraced mathematics professor! Rumours of indecency!” He lifts up his stick, waving the silver top practically in Moriarty's face.

“Rumours!” Moriarty scoffs with a smile, calmly lifting his hand and pressing the cane firmly aside. “And are you such a fool or a bored simpleton, sir, that you believe every rumour that you hear?”

“You are disgusting,” Augustus snarls, menace in his tone, yet there is such unshakeable calm in Moriarty's demeanour that even this brash bully is somewhat unnerved. “Both of you,” he says, stepping back another pace, leaning on his cane again. “If it would not bring disgrace upon me by association I'd denounce you as a pair of filthy inverts to the world.”

Moran is still staring at the ground, his cheeks burning under this onslaught. Beside him though Moriarty still regards Sir Augustus Moran with that amused contempt that has proven so infuriating to so many others who have tried to take on this seemingly harmless mathematics tutor only to find a resolute core made of stone and ice beneath the apparently soft, bookish surface, when they learn that he is not some spineless ninny who will break down and run away with his tail between his legs as they expected.

“Well then, have you nothing to say for yourself?” Augustus demands of Sebastian, seemingly uncomfortable with eyeing the professor any longer, seeing his son as a much easier target perhaps. “You may well hang your head in shame, you disgusting boy. I should have thrashed you harder when you were a child, got this depravity out of you once and for all instead of allowing you to become this filthy creature.”

Even before Moran can raise his eyes to regard his father, Moriarty is in front of Augustus, his face an inch from the older man's, still smiling, but the smile of one who knows full well he could murder this man and get away with it. “Don't speak to your son so, sir,” he says, his tone ice-cool even as he smiles. “I am telling you, sir, do not.”

“Professor.” Moran catches Moriarty's arm, attempting to draw him back, to try to relieve some of the tension.

Now it is Augustus, his gaze locked onto Moriarty's as if he is mesmerised, unable to look away, who swallows noticeably. At last he pulls back and laughs, though there is a tremble in that laugh that belies his unease. “I'm astonished he's lasted this long with you,” he remarks, deciding to change his tactics slightly. He glances down, idly brushing a few specks of imaginary dust from his jacket, as if he imagines himself contaminated somehow by proximity to Moriarty. “He could never make his mind up whether it was women or men he wanted, so he decided to have them all. Do you presume he will remain faithful to you?” He chuckles. “He was always fickle, _greedy_.” He shoots a malevolent glance in his son's direction. “Likely he gets it from his mother. That _bitch_ would spread her legs for any man who so much as glanced in her direction.”

Moran lunges towards the old man, though with none of the icy composure of Moriarty and none of his self-restraint. Moran is all burning fury and violence and it is only the professor's equally quick reaction, grabbing him, pinning his arms to his sides, holding him securely even whilst Moran struggles to break free, that likely stops the colonel from striking his father.

“Don't you ever speak of my mother so, you damned blackguard!” Moran shouts, trying to wrench himself free of Moriarty's hold. “Get off me!” he snaps back at the professor, who remains impassive.

“Calm yourself,” Moriarty urges him. “Do you not see, Sebastian, that this is exactly what he wants? For you to assault him? For you to disgrace yourself in the eyes of the world by striking a supposedly poor helpless old man?” He can feel Moran trembling with barely suppressed rage and hurt. A grown man standing before him, yet the look of pain in his eyes when his gaze meets Moriarty's is that of a wounded child. How wrong it is, the professor thinks, that this courageous soldier should still be so oppressed by a worthless old man. “Do not give him that power over you, I beg you.”

“Yes, Sebastian, do as your 'friend' tells you,” Augustus says scathingly.

Moran tries to pull away from Moriarty again, his fists clenched tightly, but the professor still holds him securely. After a second or two though Moran slumps, the fight having gone out of him.

“I pity you, sir,” Moriarty remarks to Augustus. Still contemptuous amusement shows in his features. “You who seems to find pleasure only in abusing helpless women and children; in smearing the name of a woman you drove into her grave and who had more decency in one little fingernail than you have in your entire being; in baiting your only surviving legitimate child. What a sad, lonely existence you must have, your wife dead; your other children dead; your remaining son driven from you.”

“As if I want _him_ anywhere near me,” Augustus says, but increasingly the fight is going out of him too. Taking on Moriarty, it seems, has gone nothing like the way he planned it would.

Moriarty laughs. “Strange then that you are the one who pursued us.” He releases his hold on Moran, knowing that the crisis has passed now. “You dared question his faithfulness to me, _Sir_ Augustus?” From Moriarty's lips the supposedly respectful 'sir' becomes an insult. “Let me tell you, he is loyal to me. He is _faithful_. You might harbour some delusion that you own him still, that you can possess him as if he is no more than a statue or an umbrella stand, some object to be moved about, to be mistreated and broken even on a malicious whim, but understand, sir, he is not yours any more. Come, Sebastian.” He turns sharply, taking Moran's arm gently, leading him away.

“You are welcome to him!” Augustus cries after them, but it is a second or two too late for his words to to achieve anything more than another sharp contemptuous laugh from Moriarty.

“Do not look back,” Moriarty tells Moran as they move further down the street to await the carriage. Mercifully he sees it approaching now.

“I hate him,” Moran says, his voice low but strangely lacking in emotion. “I hate him for... for all he's said and done and yet... I still can't help wanting his approval.”

“He is not worth a moment's more of your consideration, Sebastian,” Moriarty tells him as the carriage pulls up.

“I know that.” There is such anguish etched into Moran's somewhat irregular but still handsome features as he regards Moriarty. “I do know that, and I'll never forgive him – _ever_ – for what he did to my mother. Even so...”

“Come on Moran.” Moriarty climbs into the carriage.

Obediently Moran follows him, but he is unable to keep himself from glancing out the window towards the opera house as the carriage moves off, to where the man he is unlucky enough to call his father is walking slowly back inside, probably to go and complain to his cronies about his ungrateful despicable son.

“Sebastian.” Opposite him, Moriarty puts his hand on Moran's knee, gently patting it. The white of his glove shows up starkly against the dark fabric of Moran's trousers.

“I ruined your evening,” Moran says, pulling his gaze away from the window. “I'm sorry.” He begins to tug off his own gloves roughly, not caring if he pulls them out of shape in his haste.

“ _Our_ evening,” Moriarty reminds him, leaning forward to clasp Moran's hands. He removes Moran's gloves with much greater care, gently setting them down on the seat beside the colonel. “And it was his fault, not yours. Do not blame yourself for the spite of a bitter, vindictive man.”

“What he said, about me being...” Moran hesitates.

“Fickle?” Moriarty says. “Greedy?”

“Yes. I'm not, sir. Just because I like women too... it don't mean that I'd betray you.”

“Moran.” Moriarty sits back in his seat, sighing and rolling his eyes slightly in a somewhat theatrical manner. “I _know._ I do know that, my dove.”

Under Moriarty's steady, kindly gaze, Moran manages a fleeting, though rather sad, smile. “I just... I worry sometimes, that you doubt that, especially when you're... when you're the way that you are, about sex and that, and sometimes... someone, a man, said to me before, it's all right for me, I could go off and marry some woman when I got bored with him. As if I can control who I... who I have feelings for. As if my going with men were just meaningless dalliances.”

“Have you ever given me a reason – a genuine one – to doubt your loyalty to me?” Moriarty queries, asking the question not out of curiosity but simply to make a point. “Professionally _or_ privately?”

“No sir.”

“Well then.” This signals an end to this particular line of discussion. Both fall silent for some seconds, as the carriage rumbles over the paved roads.

“Professor,” Moran says eventually. “Thank you, for what you said about my mother. She was a good woman, sir, a great woman, and she weren't what he said about her either. I'm sure she were tempted to stray sometimes – who wouldn't be if someone else shows you kindness when you're wedded to a brute. But, god only knows why, still she thought her marriage vows should mean something, even though she was caught like an animal in a trap with him. Even though he were off chasing other women. Even though he ill-used her.” Moran's gaze drifts off to the side, staring into space as if he is looking at something that happened a long time ago.

“Moran.” Moriarty draws his lover's attention back to him, not wanting to let the colonel dwell on past horrors, knowing that he will become increasingly melancholic if he does. “We'll go for our supper a little earlier than planned, hmm?”

“Right sir.” Moran still seems distracted as he answers.

“Try not to let him get to you, pet.”

Moran grimaces. “Easier said than done.”

“Moran, my boy.” Moriarty moves to sit beside Moran, carefully placing the colonel's gloves and hat on the opposite seat. “If I was inclined to be petty I might be jealous.”

This remark seems to confuse Moran enough to fully catch his attention. “Jealous of who?”

“Of your father. Jealous that he still holds such a place of significance in your life, despite his ill treatment of you; despite all the vile things he has said and done to you. That you still give him the power to wound you even now. Surely I, Sebastian, should be the only man to wield such power over you; to occupy such a position of importance in your world.” He clasps Moran's hand, interlacing his still-gloved fingers with Moran's bare ones.

Moran laughs, without bitterness or irony. “You are. You do, Professor.” He leans against Moriarty's side, resting his head on the professor's shoulder.

“Well then.” Moriarty presses a light kiss against Moran's cheek. “You need not dwell any further on the worthless opinions of _Sir_ Augustus.”

They both know it is far from being that simple; that words may have the power to harm just as surely as weapons do when they are used in the right way, or are wielded by a particular person, and that Moran cannot simply press a lever and turn off his father's ability to hurt him even all these years after Augustus ceased at least to be able to physically harm him. Perhaps though, by saying this aloud, Moriarty can begin to make it come true.

Moran smiles and presses a little closer against Moriarty's side, snuggling against his warmth and solidity. “Right Professor,” he says.

 


End file.
